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Minitrue: No Reports on Liu Xiaobo’s Medical Parolehttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2017/06/minitrue-no-reports-commentary-liu-xiaobos-medical-parole/
Fri, 30 Jun 2017 00:40:58 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=201368The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.

All websites: do not report, comment, or repost on Liu Xiaobo’s medical parole or related matters. (June 28) [Chinese]

Many journalists have been contacting me to ask if Liu Xiaobo and his wife Liu Xia really want to go abroad for medical treatment and how they can confirm it. I keep saying it over and over but explaining it over and over has been wearing me out. Currently Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia are under strict police control. I feel compelled to release this handwritten note from Liu Xia. I also have another handwritten note from Liu Xia addressed to the Chinese Public Security Bureau National Security Detachment asking for permission to leave China. For now, I will not be releasing that letter. Journalists and everybody please believe this: their very pressing desire is to leave China to get medical treatment. Liu Xiaobo says it is absolutely true that if he is to die, he would rather die in the West! [Source]

The authorities did not explain the rejection, according to [Liu’s] lawyer, Shang Baojun. The news undermined hopes among supporters of Mr. Liu, a writer and dissident, that he might be freed altogether, if not allowed to leave China. He remains under police guard in a hospital.

[…] Dozens of prominent writers have appealed directly to China’s president, Xi Jinping, to grant Mr. Liu unrestricted medical care, including the opportunity to leave the country if he chooses. The appeal, organized by PEN America, also urged the authorities to free Mr. Liu’s wife, the poet Liu Xia, who has been under house arrest since 2010 even though she has never been charged with a crime. Ms. Liu has appealed for her husband to be allowed to seek treatment abroad.

“We applaud your decision to grant him medical parole, and hope that it will be accompanied with due regard for the steps necessary to ensure that, however much time he may have, he is afforded the dignity and autonomy that every human being deserves,” read the letter, which was signed by about 50 authors, including Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, J. M. Coetzee, Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie.

Freedom Now, an advocacy organization in Washington, released a similar appeal, signed by 154 Nobel laureates in each of the prize’s disciplines. [Source]

China’s Nobel peace laureate is no longer behind bars; but nor is he in any sense free. Liu Xiaobo’s lawyer, who has been unable to speak to him directly, says police are posted inside his room as he lies in hospital, terminally ill with liver cancer. Friends have been unable to visit him there. He is at least allowed to see his wife, Liu Xia. But her contact with friends is extremely limited too. In a brief but devastating recording of a video call, shared by one of their friends, she weeps as she says her husband cannot be given surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy, presumably because the cancer is so advanced. It appears that the couple want to return to their home in Beijing or go abroad. The authorities call this medical parole, but an eminent scholar of Chinese law calls it “non-release ‘release’” – transfer into another form of coercive control. [Source]

Given the increasingly frequent Chinese police practice of what I call “non-release ‘release’”, which usually means formal release from prison into another form of coercive confinement, one wonders how much freedom Liu will have to give us his final thoughts. The facts that it took a month for the news of his hospitalization to leak out and that he is confined in a Liaoning hospital rather than in Beijing suggest that he is far from a free man. Indeed his physical condition, as well as the conditions of confinement, may prevent access to the international and national media.

[…] Liu’s fate is a sad reminder of two things: oppression in China did not begin with Xi Jinping, and things have become even worse under Xi. [Source]

"The international community can see that China has no human rights when even Nobel prize winners have been treated like this," Beijing-based lawyer Yu Wensheng said, adding that when Liu dies it will be "a heavy blow" for China’s human rights movement.

China has long been criticised for its harsh treatment of activists and dissidents but since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012 the controls on civil society have tightened.

Campaigners say it is impossible to know the exact number of lawyers and activists in detention because many are held incommunicado with no access to legal advice or their families.

[…] In an annual report in March, Chief Justice Zhou Qiang cited the harsh punishments imposed on rights defenders as the legal system’s top accomplishment last year. [Source]

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

Mr. Liu, who had been imprisoned in northeast China, was found in late May to have advanced liver cancer and was hospitalized soon after, said one of the lawyers, Shang Baojun, citing Mr. Liu’s relatives. Mr. Shang said the outlook for Mr. Liu appeared grim.

“It seems to be very serious, very serious,” he said. “If it was an early stage of cancer, then that would be easier to treat. But at this late stage, the treatment seems much more difficult.”

[…] “Liu Xiaobo is receiving treatment according to a medical plan,” the [Liaoning Prison Administrative Bureau] said. It said a team of eight cancer specialists had advised on his treatment. The English-language website of Global Times, a Chinese state-run newspaper, also reported the administration’s statement.

[…] The Chinese government will probably censor information about Mr. Liu’s illness to ensure that it does not cause wider political ripples, said Liang Xiaojun, a human rights lawyer in Beijing. No reports about Mr. Liu’s cancer and hospitalization appeared in the state-run news media, and many Chinese, especially younger people, have little or no understanding of Mr. Liu and his role in the 1989 protests. [Source]

Under Chinese law, medical parole is granted for an initial period of six months. After six months, the condition of the individual granted medical parole is assessed. The period of medical parole can be extended, or the parolee can be ordered back to prison to serve the remainder of his or her sentence.

According to regulations on handling prisoners granted medical parole issued in 1995, during the period of medical parole the parolee is supervised by local public security bureaus. It is likely that Liu Xiaobo is being supervised by armed guards.

It is not correct to say that the prisoner granted medical parole is “free,” nor is it correct to say that the prisoner has been “released.” The prisoner is still serving his/or her sentence, albeit in a location other than the prison itself. Monthly family visits are allowed. Time spent under medical parole counts against the sentence.

“In the past, prisoners granted medical parole have been allowed to go abroad for medical treatment,” noted Dui Hua executive director John Kamm. “Common in the early years of the last decade, a prisoner granted medical parole has rarely been allowed to go abroad for medical treatment in recent years. Dui Hua calls on the prison authorities to allow Liu Xiaobo and his wife to go abroad for medical treatment if they so desire.” [Source]

Beijing's release of Nobel Laureate Liu Xiabo with late stage cancer is like NK's release of Warmbier: neither wanted them to die in prison.

Liu’s wife, poet Liu Xia, has been held under strict house arrest since the Nobel Prize announcement in 2010, and her physical and emotional health have at times suffered gravely. Footage of a video call with her has circulated on social media since the news of her husband’s illness emerged:

“This is simply a political murder, this is how the Communist party deals with its enemies, a prisoner of conscience dying just outside a jail cell,” said Hu Jia, a fellow activist who has known Liu for more than a decade and previously collaborated with him. “I’ve been to prison in China. The medical care is terrible and I’m sure China’s leaders were hoping for this outcome.”

[…] Zhang Xuezhong, a legal scholar and human rights activist, said Liu had been a symbol of hope for many years.

“It’s known that Liu Xiaobo and his family have made a tremendous sacrifice for the cause of freedom and democracy for China,” said Zhang. “This is unfortunate news for him and his family, and it’s a blow to China’s democracy movement, as so many people have placed hope in him, and rightfully so.”

[…] A foreign ministry spokesman was “not aware of the situation” when asked about Liu’s case at a daily press briefing. [Source]

“The world community has largely forgotten Liu Xiaobo, ” said Jerome Cohen, director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York University. He said Mr. Liu’s fate was a sad reminder of longstanding oppression in China.

In the years since Mr. Liu was arrested, Beijing has seen its international clout grow. Chinese investment has poured into Africa, across Asia and elsewhere and Beijing has become more assertive about wielding that economic influence to further strategic interests. Criticism of its imprisonment of Mr. Liu and other dissidents has grown fainter.

“China has paid a very small price for imprisoning Liu Xiaobo,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London. “It’s a reflection of the rise of China. We see most countries don’t want to pick a fight with the Chinese,” he said.

[…] “Things have become even worse under Xi,” said Mr. Cohen of New York University. [Source]

Liu's fate is a sad reminder of two things: oppression in China did not begin with Xi Jinping, and things have become even worse under Xi. https://t.co/NPosilO8JL

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has received the news about the release of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo with a mixture of relief and deep worry.

The Committee is delighted to learn that Liu Xiaobo is out of prison at long last. At the same time the Committee strongly regrets that it took serious illness before Chinese authorities were willing to release him from jail. Liu Xiaobo has fought a relentless struggle in favour of democracy and human rights in China and has already paid a heavy price for his involvement. He was, essentially, convicted for exercising his freedom of speech and should never have been sentenced to jail in the first place. Chinese authorities carry a heavy responsibility if Liu Xiaobo, because of his imprisonment, has been denied necessary medical treatment. The Committee hopes that he will now be released without conditions and offered the best possible treatment for his illness, whether it be in China or abroad. Finally, the Committee would like to confirm its standing invitation to Liu Xiaobo to come to Oslo and receive the Committee’s tribute. Due to his imprisonment Liu Xiaobo was unable to attend the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in 2010. His designated chair at the podium in the Oslo City Hall was left empty. [Source]

“It adds injury to insult that Liu Xiaobo, who should never have been put in prison in the first place, has been diagnosed with a grave illness.

“The Chinese authorities should immediately ensure that Liu Xiaobo receives adequate medical care, effective access to his family and that he and all others imprisoned solely for exercising their human rights are immediately and unconditionally released.

“The authorities must also stop their shameful and illegal house arrest of Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, and ensure that she is able to receive visitors, travel freely and reunite with Liu Xiaobo.” [Source]

"The Chinese government’s culpability for wrongfully imprisoning Liu Xiaobo is deepened by the fact that they released him only when he became gravely ill,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should immediately allow Liu Xiaobo and his wife, Liu Xia, to seek proper treatment wherever they wish.”

[…] Chinese authorities have in past years allowed at least two other prominent critics of the government to become gravely ill in detention and die there or in hospitals. In March 2014, Cao Shunli, an activist who had tried to participate in China’s Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council, died in a Beijing hospital after being arbitrarily detained in September 2013. Her family members had repeatedly warned that she was becoming gravely ill, but authorities only transferred her when she fell into a coma. And in July 2015, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a revered Tibetan lama who was serving a life sentence for “inciting separation of the state” following a trial that fell far short of international standards, died in detention after months of increasingly serious allegations that his health was deteriorating.

“The government of President Xi Jinping needs to be held to account for permitting yet another peaceful critic to fall gravely ill while unjustly detained,” Richardson said. “From those who ordered Liu’s prosecution to those who denied him adequate treatment in detention, and from those who arbitrarily detained Liu Xia on down, there are many people that need to be held accountable for their role in this cruel travesty.” [Source]

There was no indication [Charter 08] had real mass appeal, still less a political impact. But it was a sign of the times. Liu believed the space for civil society was developing. By 2008, despite the tight political grip, China’s lawyers, intellectuals and grassroots campaigners had carved out a surprising amount of room for themselves. In part through the internet, despite extensive censorship, but also through imaginative tactics and discussion, they found new ways to tackle injustices, question authorities and highlight abuses. They grew bolder.

Liu’s arrest was a sign of the times too. The security apparatus seized its opportunity. In China, people talk of killing the chicken to scare the monkeys – making an example of someone to warn others. Since Liu’s detention, the crackdown on dissent, activism and civil society more generally has mounted month by month. Beijing has expanded the security apparatus, introduced repressive new laws and tightened censorship. Rights lawyers, activists and others have been disbarred, detained and jailed. Many have made detailed allegations of torture, which the government denies.

All of this has been accompanied by ideological tightening across academia, religion, even state media and officialdom itself: a sort of sterilisation of the environment.

[…] “Where is China headed in the 21st century?” asked Charter 08. “Will it continue with ‘modernisation’ under authoritarian rule, or will it embrace universal human values, join the mainstream of civilised nations, and build a democratic system? There can be no avoiding these questions.”

A voice so free and capable of such sharp analysis should have been cherished by a developing country that, after becoming in the shortest imaginable time the second-largest economy in the world, has been trying to increase its “soft power” and improve its image among people both near and far.

Instead, Liu is considered a criminal, and he and his close family have been suffering under the darkest side of China. His wife, the poet Liu Xia, has been put under house arrest since he was awarded the Nobel prize, where she has been suffering the torments of isolation and deep depression. She suffered from a heart attack two years ago, and was hospitalized. Her brother, Liu Hui, was sentenced to eleven years in prison in 2013 for fraud, in a trial that was widely condemned for its many irregularities. At the time, activists denounced the sentencing of Liu Hui as a clear attempt at intimidating the extended family of Liu Xiaobo.

Far from being the personal sorrow of a friend taken so gravely ill after years of hardship, this is China’s sorrow, too. It has an obsession with control so strong that it is rendered incapable of celebrating its most inspiring people, and of cherishing the wealth that sparks from free minds, free thinking, and diversity. [Source]

]]>201292An Appeal From Mao Led Tu Youyou to a Nobel Prizehttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/10/answering-an-appeal-by-mao-led-tu-youyou-to-a-nobel-prize/
Wed, 07 Oct 2015 23:29:26 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=187465On October 5, 2015, 84-year-old pharmaceutical chemist Tu Youyou was one of three recipients of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, becoming the first Chinese national to win a Nobel in the sciences, and the first Chinese woman to win any Nobel award. Tu, who was honored with her share of the prize for discovering the malaria drug Artemisinin, found inspiration from traditional Chinese medicine in part of a secret project set up by Mao Zedong at the height of the Cultural Revolution. The Washington Post’s Jeff Guo reports:

The prize caps off a remarkable journey for Tu, a researcher without a Ph.D. who did much of her seminal work in secret, at a time when China was executing its own scientists en masse in revolutionary fervor. For years, Tu’s discovery of a cutting-edge drug developed from an ancient Chinese folk remedy was hardly known beyond the country’s borders.

Today, malaria is known mostly as a public health problem in developing nations, but a hundred years ago, it was a wartime headache for generals fighting tropical campaigns. Most of the world’s cinchona at the time came from Indonesian farms controlled by the Dutch, who were Allied sympathizers. The lack of supply during World War I prompted German scientists to research synthetic versions of quinine that could be manufactured in the lab.

One of those drugs, chloroquine, became the preferred treatment for malaria in the 1940s and 1950s, for its efficacy as well as its mild side effects. But the use of chloroquine became so widespread that resistant strains of malaria quickly began to emerge. By the 1960s, when the United States started sending troops into the jungles of Vietnam, chloroquine-resistant malaria was a scourge that had no good remedy.

[…] On May 23, 1967, Chinese scientists commenced Project 523, a secret effort that enlisted hundreds of researchers to discover a new malaria drug. The project launched at the height of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, a brutal time during which academics and intellectuals were murdered, imprisoned, or sent to “reeducation camps” in mass purges. […] [Source]

She visited traditional medical practitioners across China, and from those conversations, compiled a notebook, “A Collection of Single Practical Prescriptions for Anti-Malaria.” Among 2,000 traditional Chinese recipes, she said, one compound was found to be effective: sweet wormwood, or Artemisia annua, which was used for “intermittent fevers,” a hallmark of malaria.

In the interview, Dr. Tu told New Scientist that she reread a particular recipe, written more than 1,600 years ago in a text titled “Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One’s Sleeve.” The directions were to soak one bunch of wormwood in water and then drink the juice.

But Dr. Tu said she realized that her method of preparation — boiling the wormwood — probably damaged the active ingredient. So she made another preparation using an ether-based solvent, which boils at 35 degrees Celsius, or 95 degrees Fahrenheit. When tested on mice and monkeys, she said, it proved 100 percent effective.

After the successful animal tests, Dr. Tu volunteered to be the first human subject, along with two colleagues. Satisfied that she had suffered no ill effects, she conducted clinical trials with patients. […] [Source]

Hype surrounding traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has grown since Tu told state media this week that her breakthrough was “a successful example of collective exploration in Chinese medicine”, which she described – quoting late leader Mao Zedong – as “a great treasure”.

[…] Chen Qiguang, who leads a TCM research group in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua that boosting TCM should be regarded an important national strategy.

Chen, and scientists including Wang Hongguang, deputy director of a research institute affiliated with the Ministry of Science and Technology, and Zhang Boli, head of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, said legislation should be introduced to strengthen management of the sector, including assessment of professional qualifications and approval of new drugs. […] [Source]

The report also mentions swelling popularity in an obscure tourist attraction in the Guangdong mountains that was once the home of Ge Hong, the 4th century alchemist who wrote the ancient text that brought the remedy to Tu’s attention. A separate report from the South China Morning Post looks at how Tu herself has become the center of public attention.

[…] Artemisinin has saved millions of lives of those infected with malaria. As you yourself say, the prize is a recognition of the what traditional Chinese medicine has to offer the world.

And now you have a chance to save even more lives.

I am sure you are aware of the countless poachings in Africa and beyond to find ingredients for the wrong brand of traditional Chinese medicine. No one is healed, but countless elephants, rhinos, tigers, pangolins, manta rays, and other endangered animals are lost.

Many are going to misinterpret the praise coming your way to be praise for this brand of traditional Chinese medicine, which has become a $60 billion industry. Its practices don’t follow the rigors of modern science that you do. Most of the time the treatments don’t work, and if they ever do, no one knows if they will again.

[…] While there are Chinese herbs that may hold wonders like artemisinin, you and I know that rhino horns have nothing special in them. The chemical keratin that make up the horn is no different from the chemical that make up human nails. The same is true of elephant tusks, pangolin scales, and tiger claws. […] [Source]

“I judge that the Chinese Communist Party, more than any other party in the world, wants China to be rich and powerful,” the 59-year-old author told the website for the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the anti-corruption agency.

“Our country’s president, Xi Jinping, more than any other world leader, hopes that Chinese people can live well.” The author also appeared to back the president’s high-profile anti-corruption drive by announcing that his next book would focus on the perils of thieving officials.

Murong Xuecun, a rising literary star and outspoken critic of Beijing, said he had been appalled by Mo Yan’s “shameful” comments.

“You are a Chinese writer, writing about Chinese life and you should know what is going on in this country,” said the writer, whose real name is Hao Qun.

“Control of news media has become increasingly harsh, more websites have been blocked by the Great Firewall, social media platforms have withered away with many accounts being cancelled or blocked [and] many activists who dared to speak out have been put into prison,” he added, citing the detentions of civil rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, activist Guo Yushan, and Tie Liu, an 81-year-old writer who was taken from his home after criticising China’s propaganda chief. […] [Source]

The message said: “I am O.K. Here in prison, I have continually been able to read and think. In my studies, I have become even more convinced I have no personal enemies. The nimbus around me is shiny enough by now. I hope the world could pay more attention to other victims who are not well known, or not known at all!”

[…] “This is absolutely real,” Mr. Liao said. “It’s the first time I’ve received communication in all these years. I can’t say how I received it, but I know it is genuine. It is touching to hear this from him.” [Source]

There are about 60,000 translators, with 10,000 people employed in work related to translation. Yet, those fully capable of translating from Chinese number less than 10 percent of the total, according to the China Press and Publishing Journal.

With the help of the Project for Translation and Publication of Chinese Cultural Works, some 373 books in six languages have been published in nine countries and regions in three years.

But many Chinese novels that have won top prizes and been well received in China face delays in getting published abroad due to a lack of good translators.

Take the example of the novel Shou Huo (The Joy of Living) by Yan Lianke. Although copyright contracts for it were signed with publishers from Japan, France, Italy and the United Kingdom in late 2004, to date none of the four translated novels have been published, as no competent translators are available. [Source]

The Chinese language is too subtle and complex to be understood by outsiders

The Chinese-to-foreign-language translation task might best be left to us here in China

There would be more than one Chinese Nobel Laureate if our works had been adequately translated

I use the word “claim” above because Dong Fangyu hasn’t bothered to get her facts straight. As noted in a discussion at Paper Republic, Yan Lianke’s novel Shòu huó has already been translated into French (Bons baisers de Lénine) and English (Lenin’s Kisses).

[…] It’s also ironic that Dong Fangyu should choose Yan Lianke’s works as an example of those “well received in China” but that “face delays in getting published abroad due to a lack of good translators.” In fact, Yan’s 《为人民服务》(Serve the People) is banned in China, and his 《丁庄之梦》(Dream of Ding Village) was initially banned and then available in China (briefly) in censored format. Both are available uncensored in English and French, and the former is out in German too (Dem Volke Dienen). [Source]

“In China, if you admit guilt, then you can apply for parole and you may get out,” said one lawyer familiar with Mr. Liu’s situation. “That’s a principle here. It’s how things work.” The lawyer asked not to be named for fear of retribution for commenting on such a sensitive political case shortly before the June 4 anniversary.

Would Mr. Liu “admit guilt,” or “认罪” (renzui), as it is known in Chinese?

“Boil a rock. When the rock softens, Liu will be ready to ‘认罪,” wrote Perry Link, who co-edited “No Enemies, No Hatred,” a collection of Mr. Liu’s essays and poems published in 2012. Mr. Link used the Chinese characters for “admit guilt” in the email, adding:

He might, though, play language games. He has done this in the past. When prosecutors found his counterrevolutionary articles on the Internet and asked him to admit his crimes, he answered “Yes, I admit that I wrote those articles.” [Source]

Tatlow’s report offers some reassurance regarding Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, who was hospitalized in February after a reportedly severe decline in her physical and mental health during the three years of her extralegal house arrest. Editor Tienchi Martin-Liao, who speaks with her regularly, said that “she is quite O.K. and even sometimes cheerful. We are not that worried.”

“They continued looking for a hospital” after the first one turned her away, Mo [Shaoping, a human rights lawyer and close friend] said. “Now, the latest news is that Liu Xia has been admitted at a different hospital. But the police won’t let her family discuss any of the details.”

“Of course, it would be better if she could go abroad to see a doctor,” Mo added. “The problem is whether or not they will let her go. They won’t let her decide for herself.”

[…] “My personal opinion is that they think if Liu Xia is hospitalised, then journalists and foreign diplomats and close friends of her and Liu Xiaobo might go to see her,” Hu [Jia, a political activist and friend] told AFP. “This would put new pressure on the authorities.

“If this is the reason they won’t let her seek medical treatment — a political prisoner of three years — it’s completely inhuman,” he added. [Source]

Her condition took a turn for the worse last month when she suffered what felt like a heart attack and had to be rushed to a hospital’s emergency ward for treatment, said Wu Wei, a close friend of Liu Xia.

Wu, a writer based in the southern city of Guangzhou, said Liu Xia told him in a brief phone call Friday that doctors say she suffers from a serious shortage of blood to the heart muscle. Wu, better known by his pen name Ye Du, also said Liu Xia had a cold and fever.

[…] The couple’s lawyer Mo Shaoping said Liu was admitted on Feb. 8 to a hospital in Beijing to undergo a battery of tests but was unexpectedly asked by the hospital to leave after one night.

Mo said Liu was accompanied by four or five police officers and that the hospital might have been intimidated by the security presence. [Source]

Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of Nobel laureate and writer Liu Xiaobo’s detention. The United States is deeply concerned that Chinese authorities continue to imprison Liu Xiaobo, as well as other activists, such as Xu Zhiyong, for peacefully exercising their universal right to freedom of expression. Equally concerning is the nearly three-year politically motivated house arrest of Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia.

We note that the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has determined Liu Xiaobo’s ongoing imprisonment and Liu Xia’s house arrest to be in contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We strongly urge Chinese authorities to release Liu Xiaobo, to end Liu Xia’s house arrest, and to guarantee to Liu Xiaobo and his family members all internationally recognized human rights protections and freedoms.

As the United States builds a constructive relationship with China, U.S. leaders will continue to raise concerns related to respect for the rule of law, human rights, religious freedom, and democratic principles with their Chinese counterparts. We continue to believe that respect for international human rights is critical to China’s growth, prosperity, and long-term stability. [Source]

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said both Liu and Xu had broken the law.

“China is a country with rule of law, and all are equal before the law. Nobody can be above the law. Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong are Chinese citizens who broke the law and have naturally been punished according to Chinese law,” Hong told a daily news briefing.

“What I want to stress is that, China’s 1.3 billion people have the best right to talk about the country’s human rights. We hope that the U.S. side can act in accordance with the broader perspective of bilateral ties and do more to increase mutual trust.” [Source]

Liu went through a strict legal procedure. This system makes sure a society of 1.3 billion people runs smoothly. It will not make an exception for Liu under the pressure or appeal of the West. The US, in hopes of seeing China’s legal system crashed by the combined force of globalization and the Internet, is labeling extreme views of activists of the country as free speech. But only the Chinese law has the final say as to whether a person has violated its law or not.

A sense of superiority in their political system causes the West’s prejudice against other non-Western political systems. It is becoming clearer to the Chinese public that preaching on human rights from the West emphasizes their selfish geopolitical interests.

China needs to continue efforts in improving human rights conditions and it needs to deepen political reforms. We should listen to helpful suggestions from the West but we do not want interference in our domestic affairs. [Source]

We have come to Sweden to run in the nude, because it was here where Mo Yan, a defender of censorship and a senior Communist cadre, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last year.

[…] With our act, we want to remind this forgetful world that there is a staunch denouncer of censorship, a witness of the Tian’anmen Massacre in 1989, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison for his writings and views, and he is now behind bars in China. His name is Liu Xiaobo.

With our act, we want to remind this forgetful world an outstanding artist named Liu Xia. She has no particular interest in politics, but just because she is the wife of Liu Xiaobo, she has been placed under house arrest since her husband was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, 2010.

[…] We have come here to run in the nude, because while such horrible persecution-by-association has been carried out, the Chinese Communist Party has mobilized its propaganda apparatus, now draped in the award from the Swedish Academy, to challenge the universal values of the human race as never before. Since the winter of 2012, well over a hundred Chinese citizens have become the newest prisoners of conscience and been locked up in jails across China, and 122 Tibetans have self-immolated in one last protest against the Chinese suppression. [Source]

Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, once wrote that intellectuals are “the soul of a nation”. He saw this as a tragic assignation. The intellectual he describes is a “lonely forerunner” who “can discern the portents of disaster at a time of prosperity, and in his self-confidence experience the approaching obliteration.”

Mr Liu is fulfilling his own prophecy. He is unlikely to be heard from in 2014. He remains in a Chinese prison cell, in the north-eastern city of Jinzhou—not terribly far from Changchun, the city in neighbouring Jilin province, where he was born in 1955. He is less than halfway through an 11-year prison sentence for his intellectual crimes (officially, “inciting subversion of state power”). His wife, Liu Xia, may not be heard from either in 2014; she is under strict house arrest despite not having been charged with any crime, and has had only rare contact with foreign reporters. Her brother, Liu Hui, too will not be heard from; he was sentenced in 2013 to a harsh prison term for alleged financial fraud, a punishment, some believe, meant to cow the family into total silence. Obliteration indeed.

But to the Communist Party’s enduring frustration, the Nobel prize assures that Mr Liu cannot be totally annihilated. He is the dark matter in every earnest discussion about China’s future, the invisible antagonist in any talk of progress and reform. [Source]

The requests conveyed Tuesday by a close friend depict the psychological, emotional and financial pressure Chinese authorities have imposed on Liu Xia, a soft-spoken poet and artist, in retaliation for the activism of her jailed husband.

Chinese activist Zeng Jinyan, who has been a close friend of the couple for many years, said in an interview that she was expressing Liu Xia’s requests on her behalf. They include seeing a doctor outside of the state-run medical system, allowing her imprisoned husband and her to read letters that they have written to each other, and the ability to work and support herself.

“She’s quite depressed,” Zeng said. “The family brings her medication but they don’t know how effective it is because no doctor has seen her.”

Zeng added that Liu Xia was concerned that a state-appointed doctor or one whom she sees under the supervision of her minders might put her in a mental hospital that would worsen her isolation from the outside world. [Source]

I am Zeng Jinyan, I arrived in Hong Kong from Beijing in the early hours of this morning. I am relaying the following requests from Liu Xia in an individual capacity:

1. I request the right to consult a doctor freely.

I propose that an internationally renowned psychologist from Medecins San Frontieres meet one-on-one with Liu Xia to conduct a consultation. Liu Xia was diagnosed with coronary disease in the 1990s. The imprisonment of first her husband and then her brother, as well as constant house arrest has led to a rapid deterioration in her mental state. She has persistently refused to seek medical treatment under the watch of the police, as she fears the authorities will use her this as an excuse to throw her into a psychiatric hospital.

2. I request that Liu Xiaobo and I are allowed our rights to read correspondence we write to each other.

Although Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia write to each other, it has been extremely hard for them to read the letters from one another. [Source]

Your visit is timely, coming on the heels of an announcement by the Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee that calls for the abolition of the reeducation through labor system, the relaxation of the “one-child” policy, and, more important for Liu Xiaobo’s case, the improvement of the judicial system—a notoriously weak institution in the People’s Republic of China—“to “protect human rights.” The Chinese Supreme Court followed this announcement with an announcement of its own, demanding that judges bar confessions obtained through torture and calling for less interference from the local government. In Beijing, you will have an important opportunity to press Chinese interlocutors to take concrete steps to realize these pledges.

[…] We understand that there are a plethora of important issues that you will be discussing when you are in Beijing, but we hope that this will be one of them. Please continue to raise Liu Xiaobo’s case at every available opportunity, and demand that authorities end all forms of repression and intimidation of his family, including freeing Liu Xia from extralegal house arrest. [Source]

Qian Zhongshu is a tougher Nobel pitch than some of the other authors profiled in this series. He’s dead, for starters — traditionally an obstacle to many things, including winning Nobel prizes — and his total creative output consists solely of a few essays, several short stories, and a single novel. On the other hand, that novel, Fortress Besieged, seems to me to be the high-water mark of something significant, if hard to explain, so I’m going to make my best case for it being enough to secure Qian’s place in history. The book takes its title from a French proverb, sets its action in the China of the 1930s, and tracks the misfortunes of Fang Hongjian, a feckless, cowardly student returning from Europe with a mail-order doctorate in Chinese from an American university that exists only in the imagination of a crooked Irishman. It may be one of the most cosmopolitan books ever written; certainly it is, as literary critic C. T. Hsia said, one of the greatest Chinese novels of the 20th century. [Source]

An American Nobel Laureate in Economics has lashed out at the “public servant frenzy” prevalent among young people in China, calling it a waste of talent.

Edmund Phelps, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, said that government posts are not designed for young people and that they do not test young people’s capabilities and are a waste of their education, commenting on the growing numbers of young people in China applying to become civil servants.

“We hope to see more bright young men telling their mothers, ‘Mom, I am heading west, south and north to run a company,’” The Beijing News quoted him as saying, as the economist encouraged young people to start businesses away from China’s more prosperous eastern region.

[…]Phelps said the ultimate driving force behind China’s development was innovation. [Source]

[…] I’d rather see the award go posthumously to Qian Zhongshu, the author of Fortress Besieged — a genuinely world-class novel that unfortunately suffers badly in its current English translation.

[…] Qian Zhongshu was the high-water mark of 20th-century cosmopolitanism, I think — nobody was ever that good before him, and nobody will ever be that good again — but many of his contemporaries were also comfortable with both the Chinese and European literary traditions in a way that isn’t really imaginable now. Lao She inhaled the works of Dickens, and some of his best novels — Rickshaw Boy, say, or Crescent Moon — read like a sort of alternate-universe Chinese Dickens. He had an ear for dialogue that’s never been bettered — with the exception of Wang Shuo, few writers have ever even tried — and you get the sense that he really likedthe characters in his stories. (As opposed to, say, Lu Xun, whom I find far more compelling as a polemicist than as an author.) It’s encouraging to see Penguin rereleasing two of Lao She’s novels in translation — I’d love to see him get his due in English. [Source]

O’Kane defends Mo, however, arguing that many of his post-Nobel critics held him to unfair political standards. Soon after the interview was published, he approvingly tweeted a link to another LARB article by Gina Apostol on Jorge Luis Borges, which makes a similar point.

What is it about the writer in the First World that wants the Third World writer to be nakedly political, a blunt instrument bludgeoning his world’s ills? What is it about the critic that seems to wish upon the Third World the martyred activist who dies for a cause […]? Where does this goddamned fantasy come from — that fantasy of the oppressed Third World artist who must risk his life to speak out, who’s not allowed to stay in bed and just read Kidnapped? I have to say, look at it this way: It only benefits dictatorships when all the Ken Saro-Wiwas die — and the loss of all the Ken Saro-Wiwas diminishes us all. Why is it not okay that an old man in Argentina lives for his art — and yet it is okay for a writer in The New Yorker whose country is targeting civilians abroad in precision assassinations to merely sit and write reviews about dead Argentines whose political feelings are insufficiently pronounced? Where is the great American artist leading his fellow citizens in barricades against the NSA? And why are these New Yorker critics not calling them out for their “refusal to engage with politics”? [Source]

As an avid consumer of contemporary English-language fiction and of translated European fiction, I have noticed that China is increasingly present in novels from the West that center on topics completely unrelated to it. In some stories, China plays a fleeting, familiar role as an exotic other, a destination to which the protagonist aspires or a land in which his dreams may be realized.

[…] Other novels reflect the zeitgeist that has come to prevail in many Western countries (perhaps especially the U.S. and Britain) in which China is viewed as a threat. […]

[…] A third category of novels—the one I prefer—treats China as a normal part of global society, neither exotic nor threatening. (Interestingly, the best examples of this are European.) [Source]

It often leads to the subconscious sacrifice of the diversity of dialects, the uniqueness of cultural expressions and the smoothness of writing itself, simply to facilitate the translation, he adds.

“From the perspective of literature and art, it’s undoubtedly a huge loss. My attitude is, forget the translators when you write. Care not about whether they feel happy to translate. The real talented translators aren’t afraid of difficulties,” he says.

“It’s not right either to require translators to be completely faithful because the search of a linguistic counterpart is a creation itself, full of imagination. I tend to be open-minded with the translators. I think we should allow them to trim the book appropriately on condition that it doesn’t affect the gist as a whole.” [Source]